In this weeks episode of Master My Garden Podcast I chat with Clare Rooney from Willowpatch Farm. Clare is a breath of fresh air through her Instagram and new YouTube channel (links below) where she talks about her success's and failures in her garden. Keeping it very real that everything is not always perfect.

We have a great chat about growing pumpkins, tomatoes and lots of other veg as well as flowers which makes their way onto willowpatch farm's honesty stand and soon to appear in farmers markets.

Clare shares her tips for growing giant pumpkins, perfect tomatoes and we have a long chat about peat free composts.

When it comes to peat free composts there is no doubt that we should be moving away from using peat  based growing media in the long term.

But the discussion and movement is a bit imbalanced at present I think. For example you will see people online promoting the use of coir composts as a environmentally friendly solution and maybe it is if you live near the source but for Ireland,UK & many other regions coir is 100% not an environmentally friendly option given that it travels half way around the world to get to us and needs vast amounts of water to wet it before you can grow in it.

Many of the peat free composts available have issues and are not consistent in quality. Clare and John talk about he issues they have had with poor germination, poor follow on growth etc. Its an open and honest discussion and shows that while peat free is ideal there is a bigger picture that we all should look at when it comes to making out compost choices for growing our garden. Over the long term you would hope that a consistent, affordable, quality alternative will become available to all gardeners.

Its a great chat with Clare and you can follow her here. 

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/she_sows_seeds/?hl=en
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1Xe4wqlkpMefIrgmEg-NQ

There will be a blog post on this episode very soon on my website. This blog and previous blogs along with all podcast episodes are be available on my
Website :https://mastermygarden.com/

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Until next week
Happy gardening
John 

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Until next week
Happy gardening
John